Re: What about the Oracle vs Sybase Ads?

In article <1993Feb15.130303.22202_at_banana.fedex.com> bill_at_banana.fedex.com (bill daniels) writes:
>I had recently posted this to the Sybase group and it seems only fair
>to post it here in the Oracle group as well!
>
>I am not a user of either Sybase (yet) or Oracle but I have noticed the
>advertisements run by Oracle that claim a few lines of "standard" SQL in
>Oracle perform equivalently to a bunch of "non-standard" Transact-SQL from
>Sybase. The ad seems to imply that Sybase cannot do the same task with
>"standard" SQL. I am somewhat dubious :-).
>
>Comments anyone?

This is true.

Sybase has managed to shoot themsleves in the foot by claiming for the past year or three to have tremendous functionality - Two Phase Commit, Referential Integrity, Distributed Database.

In fact, with Sybase one must program each of these features in transact SQL or in C. The Oracle/Informix/Ingres/DB2 approach is to automate each of these features in an ANSI standard way- Let me give a few examples:

Two Phase Commit:
Sybase indeed has an API that lets you perform two phase commit. However, you must program all failure and recovery cases yourself, for each transaction, in C. If some data moves you must recode everything. The other products let you use simple ANSI-SQL update statements, and then Issue a Commit statement. The Database engine, not your C program, handles failures and ensures your transaction's integrity.

Since Sybase is now behind in two-phase commit-, you'll notice that their marketing has changed. They are now advertising system 10, which does delayed transaction propegation. This seems to me like an admission that Sybase TPC never worked and was never used by real customers because it was so hard to implement. They're basically saying "Well, TPC isn't really important - now you want pseudo-realtime transactions and we'll be able to give them to you sometime soon.

Referential Integrity:
Sybase forces you to program referential integrity using Transact-SQL Triggers and stored procedures. The other products, even DB2, use Declarative referential integrity, which is the ANSI Standard way of implementing integrity. Sybase says they too will have this in System 10.

To Sum things up:

Sybase did a GREAT job of marketing and positioning their product. They looked at where their competition was, and tried to fill the niches that were left open (Fast Transactions, Techie oriented, great on small uniprocessor systems, Two Phase Commit, Ref Integrity). They innovated and coined a lot of industry buzzwords and really snowed over a lot of analysts (Finkelstein are you out there ??). Now the other vendors have implemented Sybase's unique features - but in industrial strength, real world useable ways. I understand interbase and the oodb's are starting to eat Sybase's lunch for the techie crowd now... Oracle dominates internationally, and Oracle and Informix seem to have the high end in the open systems market locked up...

• Dan

Daniel Druker
Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA                    

| Dan Druker                                                               |
| agsm mail 	: ddruker                                                  |
| internet 	: ddruker_at_agsm.ucla.edu                                    |
| oracle*mail	: unix:ddruker_at_agsm.ucla.edu                               |
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Disclaimer: None. I'm a student now and I don't care what you think. Received on Tue Feb 16 1993 - 00:38:10 CET